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mrspoonsi (2955715) writes with word that Samsung is hopping on the metal case and rounded corners design bandwagon. From the article: Samsung says a metal frame and curved corners give the Galaxy Alpha a "sophisticated" look. The South Korean company describes the Galaxy Alpha as representing a "new design approach". The firm has previously been criticised for the plastic feel of its handsets at a time when other firms have opted to use materials marketed as having a "premium" feel. Samsung Electronics saw a 20% year-on-year drop in its last quarter's profit.
The phone features 2G of RAM, a 4.7" AMOLED display, and either an 8-core Exynos 5 or 4-core Snapdragon 801.

For those wondering if the dimensions will change with the rounded edges, dont worry. the Galaxy Alpha will still continue to ship with mounting equipment for roadside billboard, stadium jumbotron, and IMAX auditorium. It will also still include the ever popular 130 decibel klaxon for informing you of Amber alerts at 5 AM on a saturday.

I know you're just trying to be funny and with the size part you are. I got a Note 2 and sometimes feel that way however I still love the phone. As for the alerts, App Drawer > Emergency Alerts > Menu > Settings > Alert types. You can turn off all alerts except for these so called Presidential alerts. I don't want people thinking it really can't be turned off.

Also I think some devices it's under Settings > Sounds > Emergency tone. You can only set it to vibrate, sound or silent.

You can turn off all alerts except for these so called Presidential alerts.

This is what I've done. Not because I don't like the idea, in theory. But I was getting "emergency" alerts for an approaching thunderstorm. Guess what? It's summer. Thunderstorms are normal, not an emergency.

The trouble with the system, as deployed, is there's a monopoly on discrimination. And the retards placed in charge of that monopoly have ruined its potential and left me without a competitive choice in intellect. The only

If you're not totally clueless, you can turn these off. My phone even offers an easy way to turn them off with every alert.Severe weather is not "rain". Severe weather is something like this... https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] where you might want to have an alert if you value your life.

The rule is simple: "cue" if there's one, "queue" if there are more than one. But to tell the difference, I first need to know which electronics makers other than Apple have sued Samsung over chassis design patents.

One signal can spawn a queue to form, and a queue need not contain multiple parties, simply a party queueing.

Example 1: A cop beats up an unarmed black man on a street corner in Harlem mid-day because he "looked at him wrong", one act leads to a larger action from multiple parties. (Signal -> Queue of Multiple Parties)
Example 2: Said cop comes back to the station, gets a warning and is told "don't do it again or you'll be suspended." (A queue of a single element relying on a conditional signal.)

Sure if you want to view it that way. It isn't why it is called a cue though.

In fact, it's the exact opposite. The name comes from the word "queue" - French for tail. Since it derived from people using the tail end of a mallet to hit the ball instead of the head (think croquet).

A home that appears "needlessly large" to some may in fact be "needfully large" to the occupants. For example, they may have more kids or regular house guests than you're aware of, or they may have rooms dedicated to a home office or studio.

However there is significant strain of, "more is better" in much of North America, and it leads people to mistake wants with needs. People have lived perfectly happy lives and raised great kids in far less space than many suburban North Americans believe is a bare minimum. It doesn't mean you have to accept this for yourself, just be aware that when your local politician/developer/journalist starts talking about "needs" they might really be talking about "wants"

I would be happier if you could easily and cheaply replace broken parts.It isn't uncommon for these cases cost over $30.00. Now if I could say replace the glass pain, that is most likely to break for $40.00 it may still be a good deal as you don't always break your phone.

"It isn't uncommon for these cases cost over $30.00."only the trendy crap sold at best buy. I bought an otterbox commuter for $19 online. you can get china cases for as little as $4.00 with free shipping.

There was a cartoon in some [Amiga-oriented, I think?] magazine about a quarter century ago. It was a guy showing off a computer in an unusual case, saying "We figured out what users want isn't more power or increased applications, but rather, really cool tail fins."

Whenever I get a new phone, the first thing I do is wrap it in a plastic protector to protect the body.

To point out the obvious, with the statement I just quoted, you've effectively self-identified yourself as someone for whom the distinction wouldn't make a bit of difference, so it's not surprising that you don't understand why it matters to most people. In many ways, I envy you, since it means that your purchasing decisions are likely much more straightforward.

The reason why metal matters is because of how things look and feel in one's hand when not using those plastic protectors. As the summary said, meta

Most people put a plastic protector on their iPhones because metal gets permanent dents and the glass front and backs of iPhones break easily. The result is just like the plastic phones from everyone else.

It's not plastic that's the issue; it's metal-effect plastic. The mutton-dressed-as-lamb factor of pleather, wood veneer, chromed plastic, and the like is tacky in itself, but a bit of an affront in a gizmo that costs a good part of a month's wages. In a market where all your similarly-specced competitors are using actual metal, being the guy who sends out fake metal sends a message to your customers along the lines of "you'll pay the same, but you'll get less".

I've got a plastic frame on my HTC One-X, and it looked great new. However the plastic has now cracked at a couple of the corners, and I have never dropped it or otherwise cause any force that would do this. It is likely the results of heating and cooling over time. A metal case would not have this problem. The phone still looks good now, no one can see the cracks unless looking closely, but fashion conscious people might have felt compelled to get a new version.

Who among us has not dropped our phone while trying to turn off the alarm in the morning?

Except for me? Probably quite a few other people.I never had a protector for any of my phones. My HTC Desire S got its paint scratched on a corner because I kept it in my pocket at all times, wear-and-tear, but I don't sell my old phones, I just keep them stored somewhere.

I'm clumsy, you could argue downright abusive with my phones. I have a toddler who loves to play games and watch movies with it. I used to go through phones every 12 months, minimum, due to damage and destruction.

My 14 month old Note 3 has a single nick on the metal outer frame. It's been dropped at least a couple dozen times including at least a few onto ceramic tile and a few more onto cement. Basically the same thing (both in drops and damage) on the Galaxy Nexus I had before this phone (over 30 mont

I used to think so, and then I started paying attention to the screens of those around me while traveling (airports should be renamed for the most common activity there... "stareatyourphonefor90minutesports") and it's appalling. Among those aged 16-24 (guessing) I counted 2/3 of them have phones with shattered screens. Not just a hairline crack or two, I mean a huge bulls-eye shatter covering most of the face, observable from a good 20 feet away. And they text and twitter and snapchat like it's not even

I bought a Galaxy S and then the Galaxy S3 - and after seeing how poor the support was on the Samsung side in terms of updating and Android I have decided not to purchase any more of their phones. I had no problems with the hardware. The software decisions that Samsung makes and the fact that they seem no longer interested once the product is out the door was why I left.

In the middle of all that I bought one of their ultrabooks and ran into the same issue.

I don't have any plans to buy anything they've made unless I learn they've somehow turned this behavior around.

Nexus and Moto G phones are what I've bought since for my family. I'm still using the S3 running cyanogen but personally I prefer the stock Android experience to cyanogen as well. But that is a good point that there are options still there.

My tablet is an original Nexus 7 and my son has one of the new ones. My experience with those and motorola phones has me thinking that's the direction I'll look first as long as the current situation persists.

Better than Samsung? Motorola, Apple, LG, and HTC for starters. I've never understood the hype around Samsung's Android phones, they are cheap plastic, have the ugliest skin (TouchWiz) out of all the manufacturers and have always had sub-par RF performance on every one I've ever owned.

Stick with the high-end models from any of the big names and you'll have a better experience than on a Samsung Galaxy. And I've owned a bunch of high-end Android phones over the years and have not yet had one that didn't ha

I was referring to the android updates. When it comes to those all manufacturers suck.

On the other hand, I don't think you are really fair to Samsung. I will not defend their build quality (I really can't), or their software support; but credit when credit due - they have been pushing other manufacturers to up their game; Galaxy 1 was good, galaxy 2 was revolutionary, Note 1,2,3 have been general success. And now, even though I agree this 5 doesn't really justify its price tag, it is still pushing other pho

Actually, Motorola does a good job with pushing out updates (at least with Moto X, G, E).

Maybe... but they actively & intentionally FUCKED everyone unfortunate enough to buy one of their phones before then. As if it wasn't bad enough that they decided to break their promise (advertised, in writing) to eventually ship ICS for the Photon & Atrix2, they ALSO rolled out a trojan update (2.3.4) whose sole purpose was to permalock the bootloader and make sure end users couldn't upgrade the Photon/Atrix2 to ICS on their own, either.

Apple has much better control of the manufactured hardware since they are making it; so it is pretty easy for them to support with newer versions of the OS; hardware is good but it comes with "apple tax"

What I believe is that it comes down to if you are willing to dive in the Apple ecosystem with all its advantages and disadvantages.

I've moved to Mac on the PC side - but I really don't care for iOS so I'm using Android for my mobile devices.

And honestly having a Mac presents its own issues - but you are right, for what I've mentioned they are pretty good. Just wish the quality of their software was higher or open. I put up with Linux warts because it is open. Apple on the other hand, it's just choosing a lesser set of issues.

It's a mobile. It's basically a rectangular screeen. There's not really much space for design innovation.

In Raymond Loewy's biography, he mentioned being hired by a company whose design was ripped off (in their opinion), and the copycat claimed exactly what you said. So a week later he appeared in court as a witness, with three totally different designs that looked nothing at all like the design that was claimed to be impossible to change.

Can we get off the "Company X is copying company Y" fanboy bandwagon? There are only so many ways you can design a housing for a flat rectangular screen which needs to fit comfortably in your pocket. The "metal band around the edges" look for example originates not with Apple, but with the early Sony Clies [sonyclie.org] (though it was a plastic band mad

A) You're saying the iPhone 6 looks like the HTC one, from the back, if you ignore all the details and focus purely on the rough shape of the device, which is roughly the same as the iPhone 4.
B) Apple didn't just put out those pictures touting their "new design approach" and "sophisticated look".
C) I don't have a problem with companies copying each other. I think it's generally a good strategy to copy the best thing out there, and then improve on it. It's just kind of silly to copy and then brag about h

Actually, the actual news is, "we made our phone not look at all different...from other phones".

Seriously, Samsung needs to stop spending so much on advertising and buy a design team. Sony and HTC have their own (very nice) looks, I think. I'm an iPhone user, and this new Samsung looks like a bigger version of my iPhone 4.

I suppose this qualifies as News for Nerds, but really, don't we have better things to talk about than the "premium feel" of a gadget? I don't see much in the way of fun so far in the comments, and it's not like this latest bit of shiny is going to have any significant impact on anyone beyond Samsung's shareholders.

Steve [Jobs] suddenly got more intense. "Rectangles with rounded corners are everywhere! Just look around this room!". And sure enough, there were lots of them, like the whiteboard and some of the desks and tables. Then he pointed out the window. "And look outside, there's even more, practically everywhere you look!". He even persuaded Bill [Atkinson] to take a quick walk around the block with him, pointing out every rectangle with rounded corners that he could find.

When Steve and Bill passed a no-parking sign with rounded corners, it did the trick. "OK, I give up", Bill pleaded. "I'll see if it's as hard as I thought." He went back home to work on it.

Fast-forward to the next century where rectangles with rounded corners are still everywhere, but only Steve's company is allowed to use them.

Note that the Quickdraw "RoundRect" function wouldn't be able to draw the shape of a current Samsung Galaxy phones. The corners are rounded, but they are not circular and RoundRect does only circular corners. You need Quartz and Bezier splines to handle them.

And as you see by the Galaxy phones, Samsung was absolutely allowed to create phones with a shape that is a rectangle with rounded corners. Samsung even has a design patent for rectangles with rounded corners!

I don't get the obsessive appeal of phones with metal shells. Every iPhone I've ever seen that's led a life case-free really shows it's age, with all kinds of scuffs and obvious wear. The wear on plastic phones is far less apparent because the scratches don't show nearly as much.

I suppose excessive wear plus for the device maker as a motivator to get consumers to upgrade on a regular basis. It certainly helps that your average stupid consumer equates cold metal with luxury.

you think apple is the only smartphone out there with a metal frame and rounded corners?? how cute

Fact is, Samsung did build a phone that looked very, very similar to the iPhone 3GS. Fact is also that after that, they built phones that didn't look at all like iPhones (neither old nor new ones), except I have no idea whether anything they build looks like an iPhone 5c, which itself doesn't look like an iPhone to me:-)

What I saw in the link looks exactly like an iPhone 5s to me, so I'd think there is trouble ahead.

The BlackBerry Z10 looks much more like an iPhone than anything Samsung has ever made, but I don't hear Apple (or anyone, really) saying a thing about it. Why is that? In fact, the BlackBerry Z30 looks an awful lot like the HTC One M7 (from the front, at least) which, itself, looks a lot like an iPhone (again, from the front).

Not a word about BlackBerry copying Apple, or copying HTC, who copied Apple, or, hell, even HTC copying Apple. In an ironic twist, the upcoming iPhone 6 looks a lot like the HTC One

How, exactly does anything Samsung makes look like an iPhone? I didn't say it looked like an iPhone, I said it looks more like an iPhone than anything Samsung has ever made. You have not disproven this.

let copyright violations slide and you lose the copyright, there is no such caveat with patents

You must be confusing copyright with the "genericide" that affects trademarks. As far as I can tell, the case law relating to equitable defenses such as laches is fairly similar between copyright and patent and not nearly as easy to prove as with a trademark. But if laches is really easier to prove for a copyright than for a patent, I'm willing to learn. Which cases should I study first to contrast the approaches used by federal courts in copyright cases from those used in patent cases?